


Conciliation

by Livvy



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ala Mhigo (Final Fantasy XIV), BDSM, Bondage, Breathplay, Emotionally Repressed Ala Mhigans, F/M, Lovers to enemies to lovers, Non-Canon Relationship, Patch 3.4: Soul Surrender, Quiet Sex, Rope Bondage, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:53:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26794687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livvy/pseuds/Livvy
Summary: After a tragedy, an Ala Mhigan revolutionary has only one path forward: into the company of an old flame.
Relationships: Ilberd Feare & Warrior of Light, Ilberd Feare/Warrior of Light
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Conciliation

They would meet at the Seventh Heaven as often as their busy schedules would allow, and there they would cover their own tabs of whichever spirits they chose. Invariably they would piss and moan about the responsibilities of command, or gossip about the state of affairs in the Grand Companies. Once pleasantly drunk, they would find their way into a bed provided by the Adventurers' Guild.

The commander of the Crystal Braves did not see her as a thing in need of protection and felt no need to be gentle with her. She, in turn, refused to defer to his every word as a matter of principle.

Ilberd spoke a dialect she had never mastered throughout her time in the desert, and though she recognized his passionate curses for what they were, she knew too few words in his mother tongue fit for casual conversation. Thus did they often lie silent once they had both come, unwilling to forsake a Gyr Abanian vintage for the stale mouthfeel of Common.

Once, on a rainy and miserable All Saint's night when the Seventh Heaven was half empty, they did not make it even as far as the inn. He took her into one of the bathroom stalls and she took him into her mouth, relishing the force with which he grasped her hair and the quiet breaths he muffled through gritted teeth.

Once they forsook sex entirely when their conversation turned to quarreling during their fourth round of drinks. Ilberd offered up a snide remark about any who had served the mad king - one far too pointed for Ashe's liking, given that the topic at hand had been the old order of the Riskbreakers - and the resultant argument on the merits of autocratic rule, delivered in profane shouts and concluded only with them storming out of the Seventh Heaven in opposite directions, dispersed any appetite she might have had for being dominated that evening.

Once, as he pulled out from inside her, she rose up onto her elbows to press her lips to his. Her thighs were slick and her limbs still quivered from the force of her orgasm, but she knew of no other way to thank him. It was the fondest gesture they ever shared. He returned the kiss with a fervor so unlike his usual methodical treatment of her body, with much more gentleness than she had been given to expect. Yet the kiss held a distance all the same, and she dressed the following morning unsure if she were disappointed in the result of her sudden affection.

Once she saw Wilred, clad in blue, exiting the Rising Stones on some assignment as she'd finished ordering another round. He veered toward her from across the bar the moment their eyes met, but upon noticing his commander at her side, his mouth quirked up in a knowing smile she remembered all too well from their youth; he gave an awkward sort of half-wave and jogged after the rest of his comrades. Ilberd followed her line of sight and gave a nod. "Good lad," he remarked, and left it at that.

She had sworn to keep her linkpearl off during their encounters, partly for her own peace of mind but mostly so as not to give him any inkling of the Riskbreakers' activities. Yet he freely answered any messages that came for him, at times during the dead of night. If he disturbed her overmuch, she would roll onto her side and regard him with as much disapproval as she could muster. "By Nymeia," she would scoff, intentionally invoking a deity he did not worship, "do you _mind_?" And if he protested and defended the importance of the Braves' work, she did not take too much offense.

Only once did he shake her awake out of a sound sleep, his hands gripping her shoulders with an intensity born of something other than passion. He demanded to know what she had been dreaming about, told her that she had mentioned the XIVth Legion in her sleeptalking. She lied and told him that she remembered nothing.

When at last word came of his involvement in the Scions' flight, she could not say she was surprised.

  
  
  


Not since the days of her allegiance to the Corpse Brigade had she traveled so far south, and yet the Griffin's mandate had been absolute: she was to come to the caverns around Zahar'ak, alone and unseen. The steadiness of her course surprised her, as she had had little use for these tunnels throughout her youth, but still she followed her path from memory even while winding her way past Resistance patrols.

The sun had long since set when at last she arrived at the cavern's innermost chamber to find him alone, poring over something on a large wooden table. Across the back of his white robes was splayed the royal crest, and the sight of the griffin rampant set her heart astir in a way no man's face ever could.

"I wasn't certain it would be you," she said.

He waited a moment before turning, lowering his hood - and he wore no mask beneath the fabric. She espied first the shape of his aquiline nose, even from a distance; then his gray eyes, ever piercing, stared out at her from the dim torchlight. "I'd have thought _you_ of all people would have guessed my identity."

"Rather," she replied, "I had almost been expecting one of your doubles to greet me in your stead."

He raised an eyebrow - a sure sign of surprise - and offered a half-hidden half-smile. "I've better manners than that, Grand Steward."

"Do you?" She permitted the words to linger only until the amusement faded from his face. "Because your messenger made it quite clear that I was to make time for you at your convenience, and hang whatever other plans I had." And to make his insistence perfectly plain, he'd given the task to one of the youths to whom she'd taught swordplay in Little Ala Mhigo. She paused again, this time to take in the rhythm of footfalls from elsewhere in the cavern until she was satisfied they weren't in her vicinity. "I had meant to investigate a threat in Azys Lla. Every bell I spend here is one in which the VIth Legion shores up its strength-"

"Let the VIth amuse themselves with their Allagan toys."

"-so I would thank you to keep this quick, whatever it's to be."

"Riot."

" _Feare_."

She should have known better than to expect their old easy repartee, but nothing was as it had once been and never would be so again. He, unlike the impostor she'd beheld at the Sunken Temple of Qarn, had no need of a mask to be the Griffin: she of all people knew what it meant for a role to subsume one's identity in full.

"I am assembling a force to take back our nation," he said.

A scoff rose in her throat before she could suppress it. "And you want me to lend you my axe, like all the others you’ve taken in? Is that it?"

"I want you to be my captain."

"And why is that?" she murmured. "Tell me what I have done to deserve such an _honor_."

"You've more proven victories against the Empire than any other Ala Mhigan on this side of the wall. Unlike the rest of them, you give more than a rat's shite for what happens to our homeland. And you know, more so than any of us, that we haven't the time to wait servicing the Alliance's whims while Ala Mhigo burns."

She swallowed before she could help it, and no doubt he saw the disgust that passed across her face. So he had spies in the Alliance, most likely in the Flames; Raubahn had been the first to reach out to her with his condolences. She still had not taken Aymeric's calls.

But Ilberd had unearthed her greatest weakness far too early, and she refused to offer him any others. Not yet. And so she waited out the silence, gleaning what small comforts she could from the echoes of voices and footsteps and droplets of water far beyond where they stood while trying not to think that it reminded her of better times.

"Ala Mhigo needs you, Riot," the Griffin said at long last. It was a sentence stripped bare of emotion - no speech from an orator, but a fact stated point-blank, a bald observation. "Moreover, the Resistance needs your knowledge of Baelsar's Wall - intimate as it is."

She read the truth from him in the hard set of his jaw. "You're going to tear it down."

"And if our plans succeed, we'll tear down so much else besides."

"'Our'?!" The word tore itself from her as half a cry, echoing around the stone cavern as something more resembling a griffin's shriek. She stormed over to him, unable to resist a hard shove to his chest, but his rigid stance kept him upright, kept him from wavering even an ilm. Through her gloves, she could feel a suit of chainmail beneath the armored cloak.

"You cut off Raubahn's arm and threw him in gaol. You _murdered Wilred_." The boy's death still weighed upon her each and every time she set foot in Little Ala Mhigo, every time she walked past his mother to clasp Gundobald's shoulder in greeting. She waited for Ilberd to offer up something, anything as an excuse. She waited in vain for herself to admit her own guilt that she had not been there for him either. As the lapse in conversation between them stretched out, ever more agonizing, she whispered, "You would sell me out to the Garleans if it furthered your aims."

He stepped forward suddenly, so close that his armored chest brushed against her own. "Never," he snarled.

"I'll have naught to do with you."

"Then why are you here, Riot?"

It was a fair question, one she herself had pondered while trekking through the desert, but she could not provide an honest answer without lowering herself and her dignity further. Again, silence reigned between them - but this time, in spite of their proximity, neither sought to weaponize it. Ashe turned her attentions from his face, then from the gilded intricacies of his armor, and stared out over the maps upon the war table. The largest was of the Black Shroud, complete with a dashed double line to indicate the boundaries of Baelsar's Wall. She traced its length with her eyes, mentally denoting each of the landmarks she'd committed to memory during her own infiltration some time ago: the watchtowers, the supply closets, the barbican where she'd met Anastasis.

Over aught else, it was the memory of her _griffin_ that made her hands clench into fists upon the table, that prompted tears to threaten the corners of her eyes.

"You never thought to ask the gods why you alone were spared?" His voice was quiet now, dredging up memories that she thought she had long since left behind her. "Why you, and none of the others?"

She shook her head. "I've not spoken to the gods in some time, Ilberd."

He reached out with a gloved hand to clasp hers upon the table, his fingers tightening their hold somewhere above the Rothlyt Sound. She turned, and his uncovered face sat mere ilms from hers. No longer did his eyes pierce through her; they searched her, but for what, she could not tell.

"Surely you know what it is you're asking of me." When again he did not speak, she continued, "Should I side with you, the Riskbreakers-" _What little's left of us_ , she did not say. "-will become as we were before the fall." The merciless hand of an autocrat. Royal guard dogs. "All I've done to redeem our name will be for naught."

Perhaps it had only ever been a vain hope that she could rewrite that legacy. Perhaps this was the only means by which her father's name could serve her homeland.

"I had thought you grown from such narrow ambitions - from following blindly in your honored father's footsteps."

"Fuck you. _Fuck you_. I know what you're trying to pull, and it isn't going to work."

Yet he reached out with his free hand to tuck back a stray lock of hair from her turban, his leather-clad fingers feather-light around the curve of her ear, and not even her rage could keep her from leaning into that touch. She had not been touched since the last night in the _High Seraph_ , the night before she'd given the order to infiltrate Castrum Solus; even then she'd pulled away, too distracted by Allagan horrors and the promise of battle with the VIth.

"Isn't it?" Ilberd murmured, so lightly - so devoid of irony - that the barest hint of laughter crept into her chest.

Before he could reach to take hold of her at the chin, she brought her lips to his. His mouth opened partway in surprise, the barest hint of lost composure, and she pressed her advantage. She felt his chest rise against hers, felt his cock twitch through the leather of his trousers-

He pushed her back with one hand, more than enough to break their contact, and she could not read the impassive expression he wore.

Out of no small desire to save face, she quipped, "Unless you would prefer to keep the mask on?"

Ilberd loosed a frustrated growl, and then he was upon her again, trapping her right wrist against the surface of the table as his mouth found her neck. Behind the wet heat of his lips came the sharp bite of teeth against her exposed skin, and she _moaned_ \- moaned as she hadn't in so long, so loudly that the sound took to the cavern walls until Ilberd stifled her with the palm of his other hand.

She had missed the necessity of silence and secrecy, having come of age with it in Thanalan's canyon walls. Ilberd did not move his hand until he was apparently satisfied that she would not reveal her presence, until she could feel her own pulse through the bruise he'd laid behind the curtain of her hair, in a place where no one else would see it.

_Just like old times._

He drew back as though from an ordinary embrace, though his eyes gleamed and his voice was soft, expectant, dangerous. "Well?"

"You'd best give me a damn good reason to stay."

He pointed behind her with a single finger - a military motion, signaling for her to make an about face, which she gladly heeded. His cape brushed against her legs as he stalked off, off to another corner of the cavern out of her sight, where he rummaged through some sort of container. As excitement thrummed through her senses, she rather enjoyed having an excuse not to turn around.

When he drew up close behind her again, close enough for her to feel his thighs against the backs of hers, he guided her wrists into a length of rope and pulled it taut. He secured the ensemble with far more knots than necessary and bent her over the table.

"There," he whispered into her ear. "How does that feel?"

She tested her bindings, squirming against them, and they held firm. So too did Ilberd keep his left hand down upon her back to keep her leaned forward - to keep her arse propped up against the edge of the table, snug against his crotch. "Incredible," she breathed.

He reached out with steady hands to undo the clasps of her subligar and tossed the garment far to one side. With her thus bared, his only effort to disrobe was a quick unbuttoning of his trousers. She breathed in despite herself, a little gasp that perhaps he did not fully merit, but the physical proximity was intoxicating.

And when he finally pushed inside her, he had to stifle her again for the moan that left her lips.

Their bodies had always fit well together, curve for curve, though his frame had grown leaner since the Crystal Braves, even with his intricate mail and armor at her back. Now, the lift of the table allowed her to feel the force of his every thrust in full. His pace quickened but remained steady throughout, and once she proved to him that she would not cry out again, he released her mouth to range his hands across her body. He cupped one of her breasts over her harness, squeezing it through the leather until her breath caught in her chest.

When he lowered his mouth back to the abused flesh of her neck, she came for the first time: sudden, overwhelming, invigorating.

"I'm not done with you yet," he growled, before her cunt had fully unclenched against him. "Tell me what you want me to do to you. Right now."

"Rub my clit."

He grabbed a fistful of her hair at the roots and slammed her forward, pressing her cheek against the map of the Black Shroud upon the table. The dashed line indicating Baelsar's Wall bisected her vision. "Forgotten your manners, have you?" he whispered into her ear, softly enough for her to shiver. "Say 'please' for me."

His other hand was so close to where she wanted it - along the inside of her thigh, the better to leverage himself inside her. She tried to squirm into that touch, but her balance was off with her hands bound.

He lowered his grip from her scalp to her throat, squeezing so tightly as to choke off her supply of air. There she waited, breathless against the wood, until sparks danced at the forefront of her vision. Ten seconds, she knew: he would hold her for ten seconds, which always felt like an eternity when he was inside her. She reveled in those ten seconds without counting them until he released his grip, pulling himself out ever so slowly while she gasped.

"Please," she moaned. " _Please_ rub my clit, _ser_."

The last was a special favor for him, an offering she'd never truly had cause to give him years ago: a conciliation, a submission of the sort he could appreciate. His responding chuckle, deep in his chest, resonated against her back. He pushed himself inside her in full and his hand was on her, working her clit between two fingers, and she could not move from the map even if she wanted to. She came again at that, harder than she had in longer than she could remember, and in that breathless moment she was rewarded with Ilberd's own release, and with one of his shuddering gasps in time with their shared pleasure.

"Good girl," he said.

He pulled out then, and he had her rope bonds untied in a matter of seconds. He gestured her over to a basin already full of clean water, which she gladly used to clean herself out; even so, a tincture would not go amiss.

"I'm staying here tonight," she announced as she reaffixed her subligar.

Ilberd turned - he'd slipped his Griffin mask back over his face - and shrugged. "If you insist. Captain Riot."

"I do. I don't expect a profession of love-" Some memory of the kiss they'd once shared threatened to overwhelm her, though only for a moment. _Captain Riot._ "-but I'll need to be properly held, after all that. You understand."

To his credit, he nodded.

"And what's more," she continued, her heart now pounding for a different reason entirely, "you're the only one who's left to hear my Garlean dreams." She could feel the hunger in his eyes even through the impassive mask as she lowered herself upon his cot. "I see no reason why that should go to waste."


End file.
